Employee monitoring law · United States (federal)
Federal law is permissive; the real constraints are state law and the NLRA.
Start from your state’s notice statute and wiretap consent rule, not from federal law.
- Region
- North America
- Instruments
- 3 governing
- Employer duties
- 3 listed
- Last reviewed
- August 22, 2026
United States (federal) · what the law requires
Notice and proportionality
There is no federal statute requiring notice of employee monitoring. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act permits interception with one-party consent or under the business-use exception, and employer-provided equipment carries a low expectation of privacy. The constraints that bite are state notice statutes, state wiretap law requiring all-party consent, and the NLRB's position that surveillance which tends to interfere with protected concerted activity can violate the NLRA.
- State law is where the duties areNew York, Connecticut and Delaware require notice. California, Illinois and others add consumer-privacy and biometric duties. Check every state you employ in, not just your headquarters.
- All-party consent states for recordingA dozen-odd states require every party to consent to recording a communication. This is a criminal statute in several of them.
- Do not surveil protected activityMonitoring that captures union or concerted activity, or that starts in response to it, draws NLRB attention regardless of state law.
- Proof Ledger
- Outcomes
- Certificates
- Audit log
- Data access
- Disputes
- Data egress
- Export
- What We See
- Controls
- AKAria K. viewed screenshotsLena M. · 3 capturesScreen capturemacOS · London09:42a91f…4c023d7b…91ee
- JMJon M. exported time reportDesign team · CSVmacOS · Berlin09:313d7b…91ee77c5…0ba4
- SDSara D. opened capture reviewRavi P. · one flagged frameWindows · Manchester09:1877c5…0ba4e208…5f13
- wm_live_7f2… read /v1/deliverablesScoped key · read onlyPublic API · allowlisted IP08:57e208…5f13b64a…2d90
- LMLena M. viewed her own recordWhat We SeemacOS · London08:44b64a…2d901cf9…8e77
- AKAria K. changed capture policyBlur set to alwaysmacOS · London08:261cf9…8e7705d2…ae31
The instruments, and which control answers each duty
- Electronic Communications Privacy Act: 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510–2523. Interception permitted with one-party consent or under the business-use exception; the baseline permission most US monitoring relies on.
- National Labor Relations Act: 29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.. Surveillance that would tend to interfere with protected concerted activity is an unfair labour practice, applies to non-union workplaces too.
- Stored Communications Act: 18 U.S.C. §§ 2701–2712. Governs access to stored communications; accessing an employee's personal account is a different question from monitoring a work device.
No product does this part
What you must still do yourself
Compliance is a property of your deployment. These are the steps in United States (federal) that no vendor can complete on your behalf, and skipping them is what turns a rollout into a finding.
- 1Map your employee population to states and apply the strictest applicable rule per person.
- 2Get the acknowledgement that New York requires and post the conspicuous notice.
- 3Take counsel before monitoring anything that could touch protected concerted activity.
- If you get it wrongVaries enormously. Statutory notice penalties are modest ($500–$3,000 in New York), but Illinois BIPA is $1,000–$5,000 per violation with a private right of action, and class exposure there has run to nine figures.
Verify the claim
Every control above, on the page that describes it
- Capture policies scoped per team and per jurisdictionApply a different policy per state without running two systems
- No biometric collection; per-app deny-lists keep named tools out of the record entirelyKeep out of the categories that create private rights of action
- Notice and acknowledgement record carrying version and date per personEvidence the notice each employee received
Sources and review date
Last reviewed August 22, 2026This is a summary of how employee-monitoring rules generally work in this jurisdiction, written to help you scope a rollout and brief your own advisers. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for it, and law changes. Verify against the primary sources listed and take local counsel before you deploy.
Nearby jurisdictions
Monitoring law elsewhere in North America
- New YorkWritten notice on hire, signed acknowledgement, and a posted notice, all three.
- CaliforniaEmployees have full CCPA rights since 2023, including deletion and correction.
- IllinoisBIPA carries a private right of action. This is the state where monitoring gets sued.
- Canada (federal)Reasonableness is the statutory test, and the OPC applies a four-part necessity analysis.
- OntarioA written electronic monitoring policy is mandatory at 25+ employees, refreshed annually.
- QuebecLaw 25 adds privacy by default, impact assessments and a right to explanation.
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